Nicholas Simmons

Nicholas Simmons is a renowned artist who has graced this blog with comments occasionally on my paintings posted here. He was a big award winner in the National Watercolor Society's exhibition and his Fresh Sushi painting is shown here, one of his award-winning paintings. This will be one of the featured paintings in the National Watercolor Society Annual Traveling Exhibition October 31, through December 14, 2008. This will be at the Surprise West Valley Art Museum during these dates. I plan to view his painting "up close and personal" and hope that many of you will, too. It promises to be a very good exhibit. Call the museum for details, see you there!

PS....If you would like to visit Nick's website it is at: http://www.nicholassimmons.com/ This guy can paint!

Aubrey and GMa

We have had the pleasure of having our 2 1/2-year-old granddaughter, Aubrey, with us for a couple of days. She brought along her parents as well! We got in one painting session this morning and had a great time....she shows real promise! She painted a "life study" of Elmo, one of her favorite friends from Sesame Street. She really has good coordination and seemed to enjoy herself, I know for sure Grandma did! We held the painting session in "Grandma's Tudio" as she said. My tudio will be very quiet and lonely after today!

Happy-Susan Announcement

Last night was the meeting of Arizona Artists Guild, of which I am a juried member. This is a statewide organization of many accomplished artists from whom I have learned a great deal through their critiques and demonstrations. As part of each monthly meeting they hold an Artist of the Month competition and I usually bring along a painting to enter into this. Last night I asked my husband to choose which one to bring and he chose my Denali Tundra II painting. It won First Place, or Artist of the Month! I was so shocked when they called my painting number that I thought I had heard that incorrectly. But, my buddy Barb, who was sitting next to me, gasped out loud and grabbed my arm so I knew I had won. This puts me in competition for the annual Artist of the Year award with this organization! I always enjoy this competition since the caliber of art brought is so high and so lovely to see. Last year I won Second Place for my large rose painting in this competition and was so honored, never imagining I would win First Place, ever.

So, I share my feel-good news with you all. Happy Wednesday!

Road to Crown King Pano

I stitched together 10 photos to create this panoramic view of the valley below when we were near the top of the mountain, where Crown King awaited. I still am working on improving my skills when taking the photos for panoramas. The Olympus E-510 does help me a lot on the pano setting.

Crown King Weekend

We brought the motorhome to nearby Black Canyon City just for a getaway weekend. Saturday we spent most of the day exploring the road to Crown King. This is a 28-mile dirt road across the desert and finally up into the pines of Crown King. It was so picturesque that it took us 3 1/2 hours to travel that 28 miles because we made so many stops for photo ops. This road goes through cattle ranching country as well as abandoned mines from long ago. Crown King itself was much smaller and less interesting to visit than either of us had anticipated, but we both agreed that the destination does not matter as much as the journey there. This was proven again today as we found lots of little interesting spots to stop along the way. I loved the old wood in the cattle corrals and loading chutes, and we found a nice windmill and this windmill fed a stock pond complete with reeds, ducks and frogs. It was like finding an oasis in the desert. I even took some experimental photos that I hope to turn into some of those artsy-fartsy, avant garde, special effect photos when I can play with them. It was a good day!
We will return home this afternoon, after having lunch at the famous (since 1918) Rock Springs Cafe, known for their pies. Uh-oh!

Awwww

This photo was taken by my good friend in Florida, Vicki Green. This 3/4-inch baby tree frog was happily living in her Mandavilla flower. If this doesn't make you smile this morning, there is no hope for you! Since my one attempt in painting this week produced more mud than art I wanted to post this awesome photo to share some beauty with you all.

Awwwwww.

By the way...it is Vicki's birthday today....Happy birthday Vicki!

Apple Basket

This is one of the monthly projects for the online Watercolor Workshop group. We were to all paint from the same lovely reference photo provided and I almost chickened out on participating after seeing the first paintings submitted, they were so good! But, I also feel there is room for every approach in these projects and here is mine. I was going for a looser approach than I usually do and trying to pay more attention to the shapes within the shadows, value shifts and reproducing those luscious apple colors. It turned out to be a very enjoyable painting to do, despite dreading that basket!

SWAP painting

I belong to an online group called Sharing With Artist Partners or SWAP for short. We are in the midst of one of our quarterly swap of paintings right now. I received this lovely painting from my SWAP partner this time, Crystal from Alabama. This will be a very nice addition to the Wall of Fame in my studio, reserved for my collection of SWAP paintings. I now have 12 of them and love them all.

Onions II - Final

This is the official end to my two-painting experiment to see which technique for painting onions I preferred. There are things I prefer in this second painting, such as the vibrant color of the directly-painted onions, but I prefer the onion shapes and details with the first version. The background was also better, in my opinion, on the first version. Oh well, nothing ventured.......and it was a fun project to try.

Watermark Test

I got the idea to watermark my painting photos that will go online from several of my artist friends, hopefully protecting them from being copied for commercial uses by those unscrupulous enough to try that with other people's property. I have the new software to do this and wanted to test it out on the blog before I do too many of my painting folders. This will be a big job!

Anybody have any opinions on how this looks? My goal was to make it unfit for copying, but not so obvious that the watermark would distract from the painting.

Sunrise 10/5/08

We did try to have our sunrise picnic this morning, but the anticipated red glow did not appear as it has in the three days prior. Must be a change in atmospheric conditions or, maybe, my karma because we waited and waited and it just didn't happen. That is not to say that it was a complete bust since we got some shots of great sunbeams such as these, so it was a good jaunt anyway.
When we came home, the sun was great for taking macro shots of my new hibiscus flowers. I just planted these yesterday so I needed to get some photos of them before the rabbits eat them, as could happen! This is called Cairo Rose and I also got a Cairo Red variety but the shadows weren't good on that bush this morning.

I love the angle of this one because of the shadow cast by the stamen. I used a macro lens and the macro mode setting on the camera for these.

Onions II

Well, I got part two of my onion experiment off my mind. I found that I much prefer both the process as well as the results of my more controlled, glazing approach that I used in the first painting. While I like the more vibrant, alive colors in this direct, wet-on-dry method, I find that I lacked the control I wanted and the results show this. I'll go back to my more instinctive, tighter approach for new ones. This was a worthwhile experiment and I enjoyed the process, learned a bit along the way, too.

An Honor Indeed

I am pleased to announce that the Onions painting (below) was awarded the honor of gracing the homepage of the Watercolor Workshop, an online critique group I have been privileged to subscribe to for nine years. When I consider the quality of the paintings from which they chose the homepage photo, I am even more honored to have mine chosen. Such a high honor for such a humble subject! The link to this homepage is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WatercolorWorkshop/

Red Sunrises

Here on the desert, it seems that as the mornings get "cooler" (that is a relative term here meaning the night time temps drop below 100-degrees!) the sunrises become more coral-colored so I love the Fall and Winter sunrises for their color. Since we are forecasted to have at least clouds this weekend, I am thinking it is time for another sunrise breakfast picnic tomorrow! Photos to follow if we do. This photo was shot at sunrise last year near Salome, AZ.

Onions - Final (Again)

A suggestion was made during critique that I had missed the fact that the left-most onion "kissed" the edge of the table line....this is a no-no that I did indeed miss when I submitted it for critique. So, in the interest of presenting the painting as it exists today, I am showing it again after that correction was made. I simply added another loose flap of onion skin that took the top edge of the onion past the table edge line just a bit.

Thanks Rhonda for your good eyes! I hope to get started on my next rendition of these onions later today. Wish me luck!

Onions I - Final

I finally finished this version of the onions. I like the richness of the colors in this one but will go for the gusto in the next version, one where I will paint directly onto the paper in one go for each color, letting the colors mix on the paper and do no underpainting. I will be looking for which effect I prefer. I love onions!

Onion Experiment

This is another of my "spearmints". I have done a set up of some beautiful red and yellow onions I bought, two of them are red onions, the others yellow. I have them drawn alike on two pieces of watercolor paper. For this one I am doing a sepia underpainting and will add the appropriate colors on top of the underpainting. The second painting I will just paint directly in the colors, with no underpainting. I want to see how much vibrancy I lose, if any, by using the underpainting method. I find myself drawn to doing these value studies as underpaintings so I want to see how much it affects the final painting. Stay tuned for the results!

Notecard Design

I wanted to do a project painting for the Watercolor Workshop online group and the projects for this month were of pumpkins from this reference photo and scarecrows and blackbirds. Since those go together so well I decided to combine them in a coloring-book style to make a seasonal greeting card design. I think these colors should print well for the cards. Nothing fine art-related here, just a fun project to do.

Tucson - 2008

I have uploaded 69 of our recent trip to Tucson photos in our Travel Photos Collection in Flickr. The link to these is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157607217494727/

Catalina's Sunrise Expedition

The workshop ended Saturday afternoon, Tom and I decided to take an early morning photo jaunt to catch the sunrise over the Catalina's, north of Tucson. The morning was quite cool...for about an hour! Then, the heat built up quite rapidly, but we managed to take lots of photos, take a hike and have a breakfast picnic and the morning was a great one. I took some series of photos to try to make panoramas and will try that later this morning and post the link to them here. Catalina State Park offered many possibilities with vistas suitable for panos.
I wonder how old this Saguaro is? With the girth of the main trunk and the number of large arms it must be very old. The desert in the Catalina's was just lush and green. They must have had lots of rain recently.
Look at these lights vs darks! This was a magical view I happened upon while heading back to the road from our hike. I love finding sights like this!

Everywhere there was an item to creep up, these Morning Glories were doing just that....cactus, Mesquite trees, fence posts. Very lush foliage!

Carl Purcell Workshop - Tucson, AZ

I have returned from the Carl Purcell workshop I attended with my good friends, Arlen and Nan. We had such a great time together, although we were all three challenged for three days of intense focusing on a painting style that took us way outside our comfort zones. But, in my opinion, one would have no need to attend a workshop that did not do that....shake us up and give us another slant on painting! Two of our paintings the projected reference photo was inserted in the projector upside down and that is how we were to paint them, upside down (the painting was turned upside down...not the artists!) My poor brain was hurting after that exercise! Here we are together at the beginning session.
The painting of the elderly lady was one that I choose to show you that was the demo done by Carl, mine will never see the light of day! It was a lesson in defining the shapes within a painting by value shifts and color shifts as opposed to painting the face, and the skirt, and the apron, etc. We had to paint this in 20 minutes!
Carl tends to be a very demonstrative workshop instructor and uses an enthusiastic, whole-body approach to making a point. This is the fifth workshop I have attended by him and I always just learn so much. I choose not to paint totally in his style, but so much of what he says just works its way into my "style" of painting and is always valuable information.

Another pano test

Just more experimentation here, seeing how small I would have to go with a pano shot to have it accepted by the blog. It is probably better to view these on the Flickr site when I provide the link. Never hurts to try, though!

Panoramic Desert in Sepia

Just experimenting here, I found this older pano shot I shot in sepia mode and then stitched five photos together to make this long panoramic photo. Since it was shot with my Sony camera, it is a slightly smaller file and the blog will accept this size, however will not accept my newest panoramas. I'll probably have to lower the resolution on those, pardon an additional test on that next....

Packing for Tucson

We are spending today packing the motorhome and preparing for our trip to Tucson. Late last year, I signed up for another Carl Purcell art workshop, but this one is not in Zion Nat'l Park where I have attended four workshops by him before, but in Tucson and it won't be a plein air workshop. Tucson in September is still hot enough that I am grateful for attending one of his workshops indoors! His work is magnificent and he always provides such a fun workshop experience. I always come away with loads of techniques and plenty of inspiration to try them in new paintings.

While there, Tom will be scoping out the area for a future trip there. Tucson is close enough to go for just a few days and there are lots of places there we have not explored, so we will look forward to going there again. In the meantime, this will be a welcome trip since we have not been able to travel much this summer and we are happy that we are healthy enough to start traveling again.

If the WiFi is good, I will plan on updating the blog with workshop tidbits and photos each night. I never know how all of that will work, though, such as when we were in Alaska and I was not able to use my blog at all.

Sunrise - 8/30/08

We had our third sunrise photo jaunt this morning. As long as the Monsoon season is lasting it affords us the pleasure of sunrises that have been just spectacular so we have wanted to take advantage of them with the cameras. This morning saw us packing my tripod and a breakfast picnic and we headed out at 5:15 for our favorite nearby spot on the desert. No signs, no street lights, no rooftops, just sunrise on the desert horizon. Super!

These are just three of the 163 photos I took this morning. I also processed four new panorama shots which are on my Flickr site. They are the last four photos on this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157602224060332/ Stop by for a peek if you want to see some sunrise panoramic photos.

I shared these links Tuesday with one of my online groups and one of the artists stated "if God had wanted us to see the sunrise She would have scheduled it for later in the day"! I have to disagree with that notion. At sunrise, even on the desert, there is no dust or heat, all is fresh and renewed. It has been wonderful getting to take these jaunts this week.

I have to add, also, that we realized this morning that it was 39 years ago in July that as an engaged couple we sat on a cliff in LaJolla, overlooking the Pacific, and took sunset photos together. Of course this was with my little Instamatic camera....no heavy tripods, cameras, extra lenses, etc. But, the memory of doing that has not faded, nor has the appreciation of being together then as well as today....39 years later!

Fishing Shack - Final!

After reading some extremely helpful critiques from the WcW on this, I made a few suggested changes to make those pesky reflections read more true to the scene and I noticed a post that should not have been in front of the deck and sent it to the back. Those extra sets of eyes are so invaluable to us all!

So, I am done with this and hope that it will stand on its own now. I like it and am proud of myself for finishing this challenging painting.

Fishing Shack - Possibly Final

I am pondering making one small change to this, but otherwise am awaiting critiques. I am in danger of "tweaking" it to death so will ponder awhile with this.

Whadya think?

Flickr Photos - 8/28/08

If you would be interested in seeing any of the other photos I entered into the Flickr site from this morning, just go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157607000870796/show/ to see the slideshow. The views this morining were even more spectacular than Tuesday's show, which I enjoyed so much! Stay tuned, because on Saturday, if conditions (clouds at the right place at the right time!) persist at sunrise, we will take a picnic breakfast and be out "there" again! The desert at sunrise at this time of the year can be so dramatic, so let's hope for the best. I have my camera, tripod and hopes all ready!

If you would like to see the panoramas I took this morning and have had the time to process, please go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157602224060332/ and choose the last two of this collection. I am trying to get good at these, trying is the operative word here! At least I am having a ball trying to get these right and I think I am inching toward that!

Sunrise - August 28, 2008

We too another sunrise photo jaunt this morning to take advantage of the partly cloudy sky when the sun is rising. This rosy color is spectacular. We had a great time again, this could be habit-forming!

I am working on two panoramas and will post the Flickr link to those later, be watching for them!

Prickly Pear in Burgundy

Barring any needed changes to this following critique by WcW, this is the final. It seems I have been working on this for so long, but it is only about nine days. Now, on to the fishing shack, from one challenge to another!

Sunrise - August 26, 2008

Both my husband and I awoke early this morning. We enjoyed listening to the gentle rain that was still falling and also enjoyed having the doors open to let in such fresh, although humid air. About 5:15 my husband suggested we grab our cameras and head out to a good viewpoint in our community to take some sunrise photos since the clouds would make that more interesting. From there, we drove about a mile northwest and tried some other vistas. These are a few of the many photos I took this morning. I also tried out some panoramic shots but the files are too large to include here on the blog. If you would be interested in seeing them, they are the last two entries in my Panorama Set on the Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157602224060332/ On my Flickr site are also a few more photos from this morning's desert jaunt. These have not been Photoshopped, though, so bear in mind that they were taken in low light! They are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wcbysusanroper/sets/72157606963388912/

We had such a nice time enjoying the freshly dampened desert, wish that temperature and freshness could continue through the day, but it will get hot and muggy shortly.

Prickly Pear Burgundy - WIP 3

I am at a stopping point with this so I can consider/reconsider the value shifts on this one so thought I'd do another WIP of it. After making a few adjustments (mainly at the lower left quadrant) I will remove all the masking and start modeling all those (gasp) sticker clumps. Then I will scratch out the biggest of the thorns that come from the fruit and sides of the cactus pads. If anyone sees anything bothersome at this point, that can't be assumed to be fixed next, please holler!

What I like so far is the extreme sunshine-y look to it, as all cactus should have. Goodness knows this cactus gets enough sunshine!

Bayou Shack - WIP 1

My friend, Carol Kennedy, provided me with this photo from her brother, who has given permission for me to paint from his photos. Since she is such a good friend and her brother is such a good photographer and gracious with his permission, I cannot refuse her request (comment below) to show the WIPs of this painting. I have misgivings showing it at this messy stage, however! It is also at the stage where I have to force myself to go forward since it doesn't look like it will amount to much, but I usually just need to let it mature a bit and keep working on it and they eventually do turn out fine. I just don't like these early stages.

Carol's brother, Fred Reed, lives on his boat and travels around all the navigable waterways both foreign and domestic, and takes great out-of-the-way photos. This one just blew me away. I have not drawn on any of the wonderful cast shadows from the slatted deck cover and the great value shifts in the photo, so hopefully this will come alive when I can start adding those. This is my change of pace painting from the Prickly Pear painting I am working on at the same time.

Next, I will fine tune the foliage a bit and make the shoreline and waterline more like the photo than it is now. Then, I can get rid of that distracting masking tape and start working on the shack - great weathered wood and cast shadows!

Prickly Pear Burgundy WIP 2

I have the masking applied for the eventual sticker clumps on all of these pads and fruit. Whew! While they look rather "measly" right now I think that once the clumps are modeled properly they will look better, the masking is all one color so that makes everything look so one-dimensional. The light green color you see on the pads will be the lightest of the lights in this painting.

I will next paint all the glazes of the burgundy-colored fruit. I want these to be the center of focus so want to establish those completely so I can judge better how dark to go with the cast shadows and modeling shadows of the pads.

I received a wonderful, totally different-than-cactus reference photo from artist buddy Carol Kennedy that just is calling me to paint it RIGHT NOW! So, in an effort to slow down on this cactus painting and allow complete drying between glazes, I will start that one and see how well my brain will shift gears from a Southwest cactus to painting a Bayou shack on the water...both at the same time! Sometimes I wonder about myself, but if we never challenge ourselves we will never realize our potential, huh? Makes sense to me....I can't claim this idea of working on more than one painting at one time as being an original one of mine, but during a demo by my cactus-painting-hero Vicki Reed she said she always has three or more paintings going at once in her studio because she applies so many glazes to each shape and having more than one to work on allows her to let them all dry properly between glazes. Her cactus colors are so vivid, yet pure, that I have to adopt her method of getting the gusto of the colors without the mud you get if you don't let them dry between glazes. So, we move forward.

Prickly Pear Burgundy - WIP 1

I've started my larger version of the Prickly Pears I did the study for last week. As usual, when I do a study I often do an about-face and change my mind about how I want the finished version to appear, but then I guess that is the beauty of doing a smaller study first. The critiques I received for the small study convinced me to change the placement of the fruit for better composition so I did that. Also, these fruit change color from the pink to a deep burgundy as they ripen in the hot sun so I decided to do the fruit in the more current color of burgundy than when I took the ref photo. I chose a purple underpainting to set the values of this since it seems to be a more natural shadow color.

The image size of this painting is 18x30, which will go into an existing 24x36 frame. Watercolor on Arches 140-lb paper.

Susan in the Bushes!

After hearing all about the flood early Sunday morning in the Supai part of the canyon, I thought I would show you the rapidly- moving water behind me. I worked my way to the river side of these bushes, stood on a rock that was not 6-inches away from that water and tried to get a better angle upriver. Tom snapped my photo. Just so you know, that was one of my "Alaska" shirts!

I really do feel badly for all those people who had to be evacuated from the canyon, as narrow and deep as this was in this canyon, I can readily see how dangerous that could get when a flash flood happens. So, I am thankful this is a photo of me in the bushes instead of hanging from a rope, being carried up by a helicopter!